marcerickson, one of the most important things you need to know about Linux is that drivers need to be compiled for the exact kernel version, and kernel configuration, that you are running. Thus Linux drivers are rarely provided by vendors in final binary form.
The driver that you think you have from the Intel website, is actually source code. It's useless until you compile it, and this is not a trivial exercise.

And what you also need to understand is that hardware problems in Linux are most often not automatically solved by installing a new driver, as is the common case in Windows.

Now let's apply that basic information to your particular situation - the Intel PRO/100 is quite old, and the e100 Linux driver for it has been known to work for many years, with no significant updates.

So diagnosis is in order: please run this command -

Code:

dmesg

and report any errors relating to ethernet detection, and how the e100 driver loads.
This information should be right at the end of the dmesg results.

usually the driver for an old card such as your inbuilt NIC will already be built into the puppy kernel, so that it would not normally be necessary to load any additional driver. Does your NIC connector have any link lights on it, and if so do they appear normal? (and does the router light up a port indicator when the NIC is connected?)

You have received some sage advice I note --especially from Chris and tempestuous.

Further to the post by tempestuous, you can filter out the extraneous information provided by the dmesg command by running this at the terminal instead:

Code:

dmesg | grep eth0

I also note that your notebook is a Pentium lll system, but that you are running Precise Puppy. I am wondering if the newer kernel found in this Puppy has dropped support for some of the older hardware, hence your problem finding a driver for your ethernet card. That said, I will offer some more advice and recommend that you download and burn a copy of Wary Puppy because it is this breed that is designed for the older systems such as the Pentium lll models. I run Wary Puppy on my Pentium lll desktop... and, I just checked and found that indeed the e100 driver is available on my setup if needed.

Hope this helps,
Monsie_________________My username is pronounced: "mun-see". Derived from my surname, it was my nickname throughout high school.

"Verdict
There's no denying that Wary Puppy is a great piece of software.
Thanks to its lightweight nature, it's an excellent choice for getting
some extra use out of discarded or near-forgotten hardware. "

Does the onboard NIC work ok with other OS? Not dead or disabled in bios?

Don't know. I wiped out the Chinese Windows 2000 that was on it before testing - and it won't boot a larger live CD like Ubuntu because of the wear in the CD drive. I consider it fortunate that Puppy would boot and install.

I'm having trouble with the Puppy installation - so might have to reinstall. That's why I've provided the attachment as a .zip - hope it's not too much trouble. If so, I'll find an archiver that does gzip files.

So Puppy can "see" your ethernet device, and appears to be trying to load the e100 driver.
But this error message -
"Loading kernel module for a network device with CAP_SYS_MODULE (deprecated). Use CAP_NET_ADMIN and alias netdev-eth0 instead"
looks bad.
I Googled this error message, and only found situations where this revealed a total failure of the network driver, with no solution!
I have a gut feeling that the new kernel in Precise may have some regressions with older drivers. If so, this will only be fixed when the kernel developers fix this in upcoming kernel releases.

To avoid further speculation and frustration, I suggest you try an older Puppy version.
Slacko 5.3.x also has a relatively new kernel (although forum member ally reports success with Slacko and a T21 Thinkpad) so I recommend the most recent version of Puppy Lucid - 5.2.8
http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-5.2.8/lupu-528.005.iso
This has the older, and reliable, 2.6.33.2 kernel.
Once booted to the 5.2.8 CD, you can run the Network Wizard and check your ethernet interface straight away, before committing to an installation.

On the subject of installation, I see you have only 128MB RAM, which is insufficient for a frugal install - you need to do a full HD installation. And it's important that you carefully partition and format your hard drive - I suggest a single 14.5GB partition formatted as ext3, and the remaining 500MB as linux swap partition.
Other forum members here can give you further guidance on how to do this - I only know old-fashioned "techie" methods.

marcerickson wrote:

I'm having trouble with the Puppy installation - so might have to reinstall.

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